REEL LIFE : Rains Delay Opening of Santa Paula Cineplex : Completion of the seven-screen theater on West Main Street, already behind schedule, is expected in March.

The steady rains will delay at least one of the two movie houses scheduled to open in Ventura County. Wallace Theaters, which is building a seven-screen theater in Santa Paula, said the project, already a couple of months late, has been delayed another month.

“It’s been a very inopportune rain,” said Brett Havlik, manager of the Honolulu theater chain. “The building wasn’t watertight before the monsoon hit, so the roofing construction has to be completely stopped until the inside can dry out.”

Havlik estimates that the theater on West Main Street in the Santa Paula Shopping Center will open in March. It was originally scheduled to open late last year.

Meanwhile, in Camarillo, building is going ahead without delay at United Artist’s 11-screen theater on Camarillo’s east side, near the intersection of Camino Ruiz and Adolfo Road.

David Peck, marketing supervisor at United Artists Theaters, said the scheduled opening in spring is unchanged.

“As far as I know we’re still scheduled and on track for the April date, unless the site floods out completely,” he said. “We’ve gotten very good at building theaters in the rain. Last year we built several in the South. As you’ll recall, that’s when the entire region experienced record flooding.”

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“The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” is the kind of movie that makes you wish theaters sold cotton candy instead of popcorn.

That’s because the frothy Australian comedy that won the audience popularity awards at the Cannes, San Francisco and Seattle film festivals is more like spun sugar than popped corn. It’s beautiful to look at, but you get tired of the sweet taste when you’re only about halfway through.

The picture, screening Sunday at the Ojai Playhouse, follows two drag performers, Tick and Adam, and a newly widowed transsexual named Bernadette. They embark on a cross-county trek through the wilds of the Australian Outback to a casino in Alice Springs, where they’re scheduled to perform their act.

There’s plenty of funny situations, men in high heels hanging out with roughnecks in a mining town, lame in the desert and so forth, but the eye gets a little tired of the primping and preening.

Regardless, it’s a fun movie. Show time is 4:30 p.m. Sunday.

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Ventura Community College is hosting a film series about sailing. Tonight the offering is about a family that circumnavigated the globe twice in their multi-hulled sailboat, Anduril.

“Tri Tri Again” details the travels of Joanne and Don Sandstrom of Oakland, who spent five years sailing around the world with their two teen-age sons.

The Feb. 2 movie is titled “Cape Horn--The Beauty and the Fury,” by Gary Jobson. Jobson is best known as ESPN’s America’s Cup commentator.

“Tri Tri Again” screens tonight at Ventura College at 7:30. For more information on the sailing adventure series, contact Community Services at 654-6459.